late summer flowers

 Found one last gladiola blooming on the second sideyard, and brought it inside. Lovely pink salmon.

Tithonia thicket is doing great. Sometimes when I go out to deadhead them, I crouch down in the middle so the plants tower over me, just looking at a wall of green leaves, flowers, insects droning, and piece of blue sky. Even though there's the road and another house just a few yards away, it feels for a moment like a secret place. Like the feeling I'd get the other year when pole beans grew up to the garage wall making a green narrow space behind, to stand back there felt secret and peaceful.

A few very new-looking monarchs have appeared. There's one in the middle here on a tithonia but I couldn't get close with the camera, it kept flitting up. The few stalks of milkweed here are bare now, but looks like at least one caterpillar made it to pupate!

Now the borage is all pulled out and celosia "combflower" is thick around the mailbox. I didn't plant them this year, they just came up on their own from dropped seed. There was one plant with yellow that I cut the flower heads off (I prefer the red, pink and cream ones). In gaps I've put cuttings of cuban oregano. I do like to think it keeps the dogs away- the scent is very strong, almost unpleasant even to me. Sometimes I sit at my desk upstairs and glance every time someone walks by with a dog. Nine times out of ten now, they don't pause, and if they do, it's brief.

Beautyberry is starting to show off- its glowing purple fruit like jewelry on the stems.